


Hideous Progeny

by Macdragon



Category: Literary RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:32:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macdragon/pseuds/Macdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Shelley fights monsters. What more do you need?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hideous Progeny

**Author's Note:**

  * For [killer_quean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/killer_quean/gifts).



> Thank you to Isis for the beta.

I.  
  
Mary Godwin loved graveyards.  
  
 The dead didn’t always stay dead, but for now they were quiet, snug in their beds under the earth. The decaying bodies below her feet weren’t going to wake up, possessed by an evil soul, intent on wreaking havoc. Still, Mary kept a sharpened stake up her sleeve as she sat vigil at her mother’s grave. Resurrected corpses were just one of the strange things that might appear at any moment.  
  
Mary had always come here when she needed to think, even after her father told her that her mother’s body wasn’t even here. Mary Wollstonecraft had been incinerated by hellfire in a fight with a demon just eleven days after the birth of her second daughter.  
  
She heard footsteps behind her, and her hand went to the stake. Leaping to her feet and whirling around in a smooth motion,  she realized that it was only Fanny, her half-sister and fighting partner.

“It’s time to go, Mary.” Fanny’s face was drawn and pale, her eyes rimmed with dark circles. “You still haven’t finished packing, have you?”  
  
“I don’t want to go.” Mary tucked the stake back into her sleeve. Fanny didn’t answer; they both knew it was futile. This would be their second trip to Scotland, where they could work without attracting notice. Soon enough, their training would be finished, and they would be fighting the supernatural full time, taking up their mother’s legacy. It was their destiny, whether they wanted it or not.  
  
Mary followed her sister out of the churchyard.  
  
***  
 _My very own lunatic angel..._  
  
Percy Shelley could not be of this world. Mary had seen plenty of things. Ghosts, walking dead, demons so ugly they defied description. But Percy Shelley was still unlike anything she had ever seen before. Maybe he had Faerie blood, with that pale red hair and big eyes that didn’t seem to belong on a mortal man.  
  
Her father didn’t like him, even after the poet had donated more than a fair share of the proceeds from his most recent book to the Godwins. Percy thought that William Godwin was merely a radical bookseller, unaware that the shop was a front for more sinister endeavors. Mary longed to tell him the truth; she knew he could handle it. He didn’t think it was at all strange that she liked to meet in a cemetery. He even said that he liked that about her. “We all have darkness inside us, Mary, and you’re not afraid of it.”  
  
She told him as much as she could, spinning tales of monsters and spirits, claiming that she’d made them all up in her head. In return, he told her about his time at Eton, how the other boys had chased and beaten him, and how he had stabbed a knife through the hand of one bully and stuck him to the table.  
  
Claire, her step-sister, said they were perfect for each other. Just a couple of freaks, she said. Secretly, Mary thought she was right.  
  
Tonight it was windy, perfect for Percy’s favorite trick. Mary held a piece of delicate silk in her hands, and he lit a match underneath it. She let go and the silk floated upwards like a tiny hot air balloon, illuminated against the moon for a few moments before it caught fire and disintegrated.  
  
“It makes me think of a spirit, rising towards heaven, but not quite making it,” Percy said, his eyes still on the sky. “I wrote something the other day---  
 _“Art thou pale for weariness_  
 _Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth,_  
 _Wandering companionless_  
 _Among the stars that have a different birth,--_  
 _And ever changing, like a joyless eye_  
 _That finds no object worth its constancy?”_      
  
He looked back at Mary, his eyes almost glowing, his mouth tilted up in a crooked smile. “I’m not sure where to go with it.”  
  
“It’s lovely.”             
  
Mary leaned forward, putting her hands on his shoulders. He wasn't strong like other men, but she didn't care. He was thin and light, like the birds in his poems, his sharp shoulder blades like wings against her hands. It was easy to nudge him down to the ground as they kissed.  
  
"I intend to have my way with you, Percy Shelley," she whispered, lips brushing his ear. She saw his eyes widen, and the dimples deepened in his cheeks.  
  
This was what she wanted. A different kind of excitement than living day by day, waiting for the next danger. Percy offered her a new life, and she intended to take it. Mary had already crossed the threshold of what would be unthinkable for any other sixteen year old girl. This was only one more small step.  
  
***  
  
And so they ran.  
  
They stayed in France until it seemed safe to return. Mary’s stepmother attempted to talk her into coming back home, but it was only a cursory attempt. She had always shielded her own daughter, Claire, from the strange things Mary and Fanny got up to, and that would  be easier with one of William’s girls gone.  
  
Fanny would be the one who was truly angry, but Mary hadn’t heard from her. The silence only confirmed her sister’s disappointment. Mary would have been upset, but she was far too busy settling into her rather unconventional married life in Kent. She allowed herself to forget everything she had been taught. Every so often she saw something move in the shadows, but she ignored it. The monsters would stay in her stories from now on.  
  
But in her life, things rarely went as planned.  
  
Mary didn’t take well to pregnancy. The doctor said it wasn’t a surprise, considering how her mother passed away. He didn’t know the half of it. Percy, bless his soul, tried his best to comfort her through her illness, but even after going through this once before with his previous wife, he seemed helpless when faced with the finer points of childbirth.  
  
Like so many times before, she wondered how it would have been different if she had her mother to lean on. What advice would she have? Her mother had been through one pregnancy alone, shrouded by scandal. Surely she would know what to do...

Percy had such a weak stomach that he couldn’t stand to be in the room as she gave birth. It was his friend, Hogg, who held her hand through the labor. He was so calm and _normal_ , so unlike Percy, or really, anyone else in her life.

Despite the difficulties, everything was forgiven once the baby was born. A beautiful girl they named Elizabeth, after her grandmother. Mary knew a few brief days of joy. She’d never seen anything so perfect as Elizabeth, who had her father’s red hair and her mother’s brown eyes. Even after the difficult pregnancy, the baby was healthy.

On the tenth night, Mary put the child to bed with a lullaby. On the eleventh morning, she woke up to find Elizabeth cold and unmoving, her tiny features twisted in a grimace of pain. Before the sorrow, before the anger, Mary felt a cold certainty. Elizabeth’s death was not a result of natural causes. The scent of charred flowers lingered in the air. Faerie, and not of the friendly breed that she had once imagined her husband to hail from. There was no escaping the paranormal. They had followed her here, and they were taunting her.  

Depression was the biggest monster she had ever fought. Her limbs begged to be put to rest, her mind screamed for oblivion. Mary made herself blind to anything but the purpose of revenge. She employed Hogg to drive her from Kent to London, not wanting Percy to see her in this state. Hogg didn’t ask questions; he never did. She merely said that she wanted to see her sister, and that was enough.  
  
When she arrived at the house in London, she didn’t waste time with greetings. Her father was out, but Fanny was at home. Mary had sent a letter ahead, so Fanny was familiar with the situation already.  
  
Fanny led her through the library and into the hidden passageway to their training room. Magical weapons of every sort were stored here. Mary’s eyes lit on the iridescent dagger carefully laid in a glass case. The Ultima Blade, designed for killing the Fae.  
  
“Mary, let me do this,” Fanny said quietly, her hand tight around the key. “You aren’t thinking straight. To do something like this, you need a rational mind, a fit body--neither of which you have right now...”

Mary proved that she was perfectly fit by wrenching the key out of her sister’s hand. She opened the case and pulled out the blade. It flashed in the firelight, and she could see the etched gold designs on the hilt. Buckling the jeweled sheath around her skirt, Mary secured the blade and strode out of the room.  
  
"Mary, wait!”  
  
She paused, glancing over her shoulder, allowing Fanny to catch up.

“Let me come with you. I’ll help you. Not just with this, but with everything. It’s not right for us to be apart like this...we’re partners.”

Mary hesitated. A different future hung ahead of her, just like when she had left with Percy. “I’ve missed you, Fanny.” She took a deep breath, turned again. “But I can’t. I’m going to kill this creature, and then I’m going back to my life.”  
  
“That’s impossible. Losing your child should have taught you that.” But Fanny watched her go, and didn’t try to stop her again. Mary closed the door of the London house behind her with no regrets.  
  
Where would an evil faerie be hiding? Mary was certain that it would have followed her to London. They liked conflict; the thing was probably looking forward to the fight, after provoking her by killing Elizabeth. Faeries were in their element around trees and flowers, so Mary headed for Kensington Gardens.  
  
Night was approaching, and Mary was a woman alone, but something in her face must have warned people away. They kept their distance, only staring as she passed. In the Garden, there were couples going for an evening stroll and families enjoying the last dying rays of sunlight. Mary kept walking until the landscape changed around her. The path disappeared, and the trees grew in thicker, the branches twining over her head.  
  
“Mary Godwin, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, now wife of Percy Shelley...what a pleasure.” The creature materialized out of thin air in front of her, making her pull up short. The faerie was tall and of indeterminate gender, with long blonde hair framing a delicate face, its cruel green eyes meeting Mary’s.  Her heart was pounding, but the fear was refreshing. Mary felt alive again.  
  
“What do you want from me?” she demanded. Her hand was on the knife, but she didn’t pull it out just yet.  
  
The faerie smiled. “You already know the answer. We’re ancient enemies, my people and your family. And you, my dear, were boring me. I knew stealing that little whelp’s soul would convince you to offer more of a challenge.”

“More of a challenge than you were expecting, I think.” Mary unsheathed the blade, letting the faerie have a good look at it.  
  
For a second, she saw fear on the creature’s inscrutable face. “Didn’t know we had Ultima?” Mary taunted, lifting the blade. “Our family still has its secrets. Too  bad you won’t be alive long enough to learn more.”

She lunged, and the faerie dodged, then raced away through the trees. It was fast, but Mary was armed with the power of an avenging mother. She caught up and launched herself at the faerie’s back, dagger at the ready. They fell together, the knife lodged between the faerie’s shoulders. Smoke curled out from the wound, and the faerie went limp.  
  
Mary left the dagger there in the faerie’s back. It was a warning. She was going back to her real life, and she wasn’t afraid to fight for it.  
  
  
II.  
  
They said he was mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but Mary wasn’t afraid of him.  
  
Mary had returned to Kent a few days after killing the faerie. She told Percy that she had gone mad with grief, but she was better now. He suggested that they join his new friend Lord Byron on Lake Geneva for a refreshing holiday, and she immediately agreed.

There were two things she hadn’t bargained on. First, Claire showed up at the villa the day after they arrived, having run away from her oppressive mother. Second--Lord Byron was a vampire.  
  
And Claire was completely, irrevocably in love with him.

A few nights into their stay at the lake, Mary cornered Byron while Claire was asleep and Percy was writing. Byron was sitting by the lake, drinking wine and throwing a ball for his dog. Mary didn’t know why the dog stayed with him; usually, animals hated vampires. Byron, however, seemed to defy everything she had ever learned about the blood-suckers.  
  
“I know what you are,” Mary said, crouching down beside him. She had a silver letter-opened tucked into her boot, for good measure.

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “And that is? A rake? Everyone knows that. If you’re worried about your sister, I’m sorry, but it’s too late. Her maidenhead has been sadly divested of...”

“For Heaven’s sake...” Mary’s stomach churned at the thought of her priggish stepsister together with the too-suave Lord Byron. “I might have guessed that. However, not everyone knows that you are in fact not human, but a vampire.”  
  
To his credit, he managed not to appear too shocked. He took another swig from the wine bottle, scratching his dog behind the ears. “So you are a Wollstonecraft. Rumor had it you  were out of the profession. I thought perhaps your father had kept your lineage a secret.”  
  
 “If only that were the case.” Mary picked up the ball and threw it. It sailed through the air, landing a good distance away. She glanced back at Byron, making sure he understood--she still had her strength, and it could just as easily be applied to a stake.

He chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m harmless--well, as far as vampirey things go. I find humans far too interesting to make myself an enemy of them.” He offered her the bottle, and she took it. “I’m still not going to leave your sister alone, though.”  
  
“She’s only my step-sister, and I don’t care.” She grinned and drank deeply.  
  
Mary and Byron were fast friends for the rest of the summer. They were the ones who came up with the idea of a story contest. Polidori, the funny little man who was Byron’s blood source, wrote a tale about a vampire. Mary had to fight to keep herself from laughing out loud when she read it. For her contribution, she wrote something about a scientific creation. The science was Percy’s idea, but the rest was all her own. A monster that was a conglomeration of all the things she had fought, with a noble heart like Byron’s.  
  
The summer was a beautiful respite from the darkness of the year before. If only it could have lasted.  
  
***  
  
In the fall, they returned to England. Claire was pregnant and had decided to try to hide it in Bath. Percy insisted that they accompany her and help her through it, and Mary begrudgingly agreed. Neither of them were happy with Byron for being so careless, but they would forgive him eventually. Percy, because Byron understood his art on a level that no other did, and Mary because of the secrets they shared.  
  
Bath might have worked. It was a lovely city, an excellent place to write the finishing touches of her novel. When they grew tired of writing, she and Percy walked along the promenades or visited the hot baths. They lived in the shadow of the Abbey, which offered Mary a false sense of protection from the occult.  
  
As soon as she got the letter from  her sister, her heart dropped like a stone. She tore it open and read it quickly. _Mary, I need you. This is too big for one person. Come to Swansea at once. Help me kill this and I will never ask for a favor again._  
  
She burned the letter immediately, fabricating an explanation of her sister’s distress to tell to Percy. It made her heart ache to leave him again, but she knew that Fanny would not have written if the situation was not truly serious. She left early the next morning, kissing her husband’s forehead before stealing out into dawn.  
  
She was still too late. When she arrived at the hotel where her sister had been lodging, the proprietress ran out to meet her. She must have realized from their likeness that she was Fanny’s sister.  
  
“I’m so sorry.” The other woman was sobbing, but Mary couldn’t will herself to cry. She felt cold, her mind foggy. She followed the proprietress up to the room, where Fanny was still lying, limbs akimbo. Mary’s head hurt as she picked up on the residual presence of a demon.  
  
“My sister was troubled.” Mary picked up the bottle of laudanum that was still clenched in her sister’s hand. Whatever had killed her wanted it to seem like Fanny had taken her own life.

That night, she wrote to Percy, giving him the suicide explanation, and telling him that she needed to stay in Swansea to arrange the funeral. She asked him not to come until the next day, as she needed time alone to say goodbye to her sister. She would have twenty-four  hours to track down the demon that had killed Fanny, and defeat it.  
  
Her sister hadn’t been able to fight the demon with weapons alone and she had been impossibly strong. Mary would need something special to bring this demon down.

A spell. And she knew exactly where to get one.

Mary spent the rest of the day gathering the materials she would need. She fought through her despair with single-minded purpose, determined to finish what her sister had begun. If the demon was this powerful, she had reason to believe it was the same one that killed her mother. Maybe if she defeated it, she would be free of the family destiny forever.    
     
***

She had been allowed back into her sister’s room to pack up her things. Mary knew that she only had a small amount of time before the proprietress became suspicious, so she worked quickly. Marking out a pentagram on the wooden floor, she set up the chosen objects in the center. Blue violets, maple leaves, and moss. All things mentioned in the poem Percy had written just a few days ago. She had brought them with her on the journey to remind her of her husband, not knowing that it would be so crucial.  
  
With the circle created, she stepped outside it and lit the candles around the edge. Taking a deep breath, she began to recite the first stanza of the poem.  
 _"O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,_  
 _Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead_  
 _Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,_  
 _...Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;_  
 _Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!_ "  
  
As she read, the room grew cold. The paper in her hands fluttered, as if there were wind blowing. A shadowy form began to appear in the center of the pentagram. The demon was a swirling black mass with glowing red eyes. Taking a deep breath, Mary paused in her reading. “Go back to hell, where you belong.”

The demon hissed, the smoke shifting until it formed a shiny black snake. It coiled up, ready to strike, but when it tried to move, its nose slapped against the edge of the pentagram as if there were a glass wall there.  
  
“This is ssssstrong...” Its eyes whirled with flames, and Mary could feel the anger rolling in waves off of the demon. It changed again, becoming a great cat with sharp claws, but when it leaped at her, it was thrown back a second time. A high pitched scream filled the air as the demon returned to its original form.  
  
“You have no choice. Go back or be trapped here forever.” Mary held up the poem, beginning to recite the last stanza.  
 _Drive my dead thoughts over the universe_  
 _Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!_  
 _And, by the incantation of this verse,_  
 _Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth_  
 _Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!_  
 _Be through my lips to unawakened earth_  
 _The trumpet of a prophecy!”_

Her voice grew steadily louder to be heard over the demon’s screams. She could see it growing more faint, tendrils of smoke disappearing as the demon was pulled back into the underworld.  
  
With its last corporeal moments, the demon met her eyes. “This isn’t over! Take something from me and I’ll take something from you---”  
  
Rushing water filled her mouth. She gagged, but nothing came out. The water was just an illusion, but it was a powerful one. She heard rushing waves, and then her legs were knocked out from under her by a torrent of water.  
  
Her vision darkened, and when it returned, it was over. The chalk pentagram was black and the demon was gone.  
  
Mary finished the final lines of the poem like a prayer. _“O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”_

She took a few moments to collect herself before cleaning up the circle. Picking up the bag that held Fanny’s few possessions, she walked back downstairs. She was shaking, but she had just lost her sister; of course she was upset. She smiled at the proprietress and left the hotel. Percy would be meeting her in a few hours. They would hold the funeral back in London. It was time to close the book on this chapter of her life.

Mary Shelley loved graveyards once.  


**Author's Note:**

> Many details are based on fact (or at least established legend). It was surprisingly easy to write the supernatural into Mary Shelley's life.
> 
> The poems included are "To the Moon" and "Ode to the West Wind."


End file.
